« Further discussion about economists and peak oil | Main | Should we worry about all that debt held by foreigners? »
July 15, 2005
On a lighter note
Who says economists don't have a sense of humor? Well, maybe you will, after you find out that I admit to having chuckled over these accounts. Judge for yourself.
From Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:
A famous economist is trying to capture terrorists by combing through data on banking records. Wimpy. Wimpy. Wimpy. A real rogue economist would go after them with his bare hands.
From Institutional Economics:
There is not a single asset class that has not been pronounced as being in a 'bubble' in recent years. My working definition of a bubble is anything that goes up in price faster than The Economist magazine can understand.
And if you've never heard the story of how P.T. Barnum came (incorrectly) to be credited with the phrase, "there's a sucker born every minute," it's truly an all-time great one (scroll down for story).
Posted by James Hamilton at July 15, 2005 09:11 PM
digg this | redditTrackback Pings
Comments
Did you see the paper linked at Institutional Economics arguing that high NASDAQ valuations in 2000 were rational, rather than a bubble, since uncertainty about future profits increased the value of the firms:
http://www.smarteconomist.com/insight/68
I thought that one was particularly hilarious. I have been involved with pitching VCs on a number of occasions, and my experience is that uncertainty about future profitability is definitely not a desirable value-enhancing feature of the deal!
My impression of the late 90s was that most VCs and investment bankers were quite cynically unloading what they knew were bad deals onto an investing public that was naive about technology stocks, and in too much of a state of greed-induced euphoria to apply common sense.
Posted by: Stuart Staniford at July 15, 2005 10:31 PM
Of course, for economists with a sense of humor:
http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html
Posted by: Jim Glass at July 15, 2005 11:41 PM
Another source of jokes about Economics is
www.econjokes.com
Posted by: Joker at July 16, 2005 09:13 PM
If an economist developed the technology to link attacks with market signals, economics presumably assumes that he would keep the secret under wraps and use it to profit from future attacks?
Posted by: H at July 18, 2005 05:40 PM